THE METROPOLIS IN TIME OF WAR.
President Lincoln had a bright, spring-like day for his first New
Year's reception, and the dignitaries who in turn paid their respects
found such a crowd around the door of the White House that they
experienced some little inconvenience in reaching the interior.
Lord Lyons, of England, and M. Mercier, of France, were prominent
among the diplomats, and General McDowell headed the army officers,
General McClellan being ill. At noon the public were admitted,
order being maintained by the police, who appeared for the first
time in uniform. Passing on to the reception-room, the people met
and shook hands with the President, near whom stood Mrs. Lincoln,
who was attended by the United States Marshal of the District,
Colonel Lamon, Captain Darling, chief of the Capitol police, and
the President's secretaries. The visitors thence passed to the
great East Room, where it was apparent they were unusually numerous,
more strangers being present in Washington at the time, perhaps,
than ever before. The crowd, indeed, as looked upon by old residents,
appeared to present new faces almost entirely. The general scene
was brilliant and animating, and the whole was enlivened, as usual,
by strains of the Marine Band, which was stationed in the vestibule.
By two o'clock the promenaders generally had departed by means of
a platform for egress, constructed through one of the large windows
at the front of the mansion.
The Abolitionists were greatly disappointed because there had not
been any insurrectionary movements among the slaves at the South,
which had been looked for at the Christmas holidays, and they then
increased their exertions to make Mr. Lincoln issue a proclamation
abolishing slavery. At the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, held at Boston, in January,
1862, Wendell Phillips, with a sneer, expressed himself thus: "Mr.
Seward had predicted that the war would be over in ninety days,
but he didn't believe, as things were going, it would be over in
ninety years. He believed Lincoln was honest, but as a pint-pot
may be full, and yet not be so full as a quart, so there is a vast
difference between the honesty of a small man and the honesty of
a statesman."
There was an imposing parade through the streets of a new arm of
the military service, a battalion or regiment of mounted lancers.
The men carried lances about twelve feet long, held upright as they
rode, and having black staffs and bright spear heads, something
like the sword bayonet, though only about half as long. This corps
was under the command of Colonel Rush, of Pennsylvania. Each
horseman bore a small red flag on the top of his lance, and the
novelty of the display attracted much attention, though the
spectators, not greatly impressed with the effectiveness of the
weapon with which the corps was armed, gave them the sobriquet
"Turkey Drivers," which stuck to them ever afterward.
President Lincoln had a pet scheme during the war for establishing
a colony of contrabands at the Chiriqui Lagoon, with a new transit
route across the Isthmus to the harbor of Golfito, on the Pacific.
The first company of emigrants, composed of freeborn negroes and
liberated slaves, was organized, under President Lincoln's personal
supervision, by Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, and would have started,
but the diplomatic representative of Costa Rica protested. Negro
settlers, he said, would be welcomed in the province of Chiriqui,
but such a colony as it was proposed to establish would necessarily
be under the protection of the United States, and grave difficulties
might ensue. Besides, such a colony would almost invite an attack
from the Confederates, then quite powerful, who would seek their
slaves, and who would regard a negro colony with especial aversion.
Mr. Lincoln regretted this fiasco, as negro colonization was his
favorite panacea for the national troubles. He again and again
declared that the continuance of the African race in the United
States could but be injurious to both blacks and whites, and that
the expatriation and colonization of the negro was a political
necessity. Those who had zealously opposed slavery and who had
regarded the war as securing the freedom of the negroes, combated
the President's scheme. They insisted that the blacks had a right
to remain in the land of their birth, and declared that expatriation,
as a measure of political economy, would be fatal to the prosperity
of the country, for it would drive away a large amount of productive
labor. A colony was subsequently taken to one of the West India
Islands, but it was a miserable failure, and the colonists, after
great suffering, were brought back.
The scandals concerning army contracts enabled the Abolitionists
to secure the transfer of Simon Cameron from the War Department to
the Russian Mission, and the appointment of Edwin M. Stanton in
his place. It should not be forgotten that Mr. Cameron is entitled
to great credit for the energy and skill with which he managed the
War Office from March, 1861, until February, 1862. He laid the
foundation of that military organization which eventually, under
the leadership of Grant and Sherman, crushed the Rebellion and
restored the Union. One of the regiments which came to Washington
from New York, the Seventy-ninth Highlanders, becoming wretchedly
disorganized, he detailed his brother, Colonel James Cameron, to
command it. This settled all differences, the Scotchmen remembering
the proverb that "The Camerons of Lochiel never proved false to a
friend or a foe." In a few weeks, however, Colonel Cameron was
killed at the Battle of Bull Run while bravely leading his men
against the enemy. The weight of this great calamity fell upon
Secretary Cameron at a time when the utmost powers of his mind were
being exerted to save Washington from capture. For a brief period
it crushed him, but the dangers then surrounding the national cause
were too numerous and too threatening to admit of anything but
redoubled exertions to avert them. Summoning, therefore, all his
fortitude and energy, he for the moment suppressed his intense
grief and recommenced his labors. New armies were organized as if
by magic, and Washington was saved.
Mr. Stanton's strong will was relied upon by the Abolitionists for
the control of General McClellan, who had given some indications
of his willingness to restore the Union "as it was," with slavery
legalized and protected. While "Little Mac" had become the idol
of the rank and file of the Army of the Potomac, which he had
thoroughly organized and equipped, he had also provoked the opposition
of those in his rear from whom he should have received encouragement
and support. Naturally cautious, he hesitated about moving when
he knew that if successful he would immediately be crippled by the
withdrawal of a portion of his command. A prominent politician,
more outspoken than some of them around him, is quoted by General
Custer as having said: "It is not on our books that McClellan
should take Richmond."
Mr. Stanton had witnessed so much treason while he was a member of
Buchanan's Cabinet, that he determined to know exactly what was
done by every officer of the army, and one of his first acts was
to have news sent over the wires pass through the War Department.
Every wire in the country was "tapped" and its contents made a
matter of record. Every telegram sent by President Lincoln or the
members of his Cabinet to the generals in the field, or received
by them from those generals, was put on record at Washington, as
were all cipher despatches, deciphered by General Eckert. On one
occasion a despatch from General Rufus Ingalls to Senator Nesmith
puzzled every one at the War Department except Quartermaster-General
Meigs, who was positive that it was Bohemian. Finally an officer
who had served on the Pacific coast recognized it as "Chinook," a
compound of the English, Chinese, and Indian languages used by the
whites in trading with the Chinook Indians. The despatch was a
harmless request from General Ingalls to his old friend "Nes." to
come and witness an impeding engagement.
A detective system of espionage had been organized by Mr. Seward
for the protection of the United States Government against the
adherents of the Confederate cause. The reports made by this corps
of detectives to the Department of State showed the daring acts of
the Southern sympathizers, several of whom were ladies of wealth
and fashion. How they watched and waited at official doors till
they had bagged the important secret of state they wanted; how they
stole military maps from the War Department; how they took copies
of official documents; how they smuggled the news of the Government's
strength in the linings of honest-looking coats; and how they hid
army secrets in the meshes of unsuspected crinoline--all these
became familiar facts, almost ceasing to excite remark or surprise.
The head of this branch of the service was General Lafayette S.
Baker.
Of this band of active and useful plotters, who were constantly
engaged playing into the hands of the Confederates under the very
shadow of the Capitol, some of the women of Washington were the
busiest. The intriguing nature of these dames appears to have
found especial delight in forwarding the schemes of the leaders in
the movement to overthrow the Washington Government. It mattered
not that most of them owed all they possessed of fortune and position
to that Federal Government, and to the patronage which, directly
or indirectly, they had received from it. This very fact lent a
spice of daring to the deed, while an irresistible attraction was
furnished in the fact that they were plotting the ruin of a Government
which had fallen into the hands of that Northern majority whom,
with all the lofty scorn of "patrician" blood, they despised and
detested.
Mrs. Rose O. H. Greenhow was the most adroit of the Confederate
emissaries. The sister of Mrs. Cutts, mother of Mrs. Douglas, and
the widow of a clerk in the State Department, who had written a
valuable work on Oregon, her social position gave her remarkable
facilities for obtaining information. Just before the battle of
Bull Run she contrived to convey to the enemy news obtained from
a New England Senator with regard to the intended movements of the
Federals. This communication, in her own opinion, decided the
battle. In return she received this despatch from the Confederate
Adjutant-General: "Our President and our General direct me to
thank you. We rely upon you for further information. The Confederacy
owes you a debt."
Mrs. Greenhow's house was finally used as a prison for female spies.
The windows looking on the street were boarded up, and a special
military guard occupied tents pitched in the garden. Mrs. Greenhow
and her pretty daughter Rose were the presiding deities. Then there
was Mrs. Phillips, daughter of J. C. Levy, of Charleston, S. C.,
where she married Philip Phillips, who afterward removed to Mobile
and was elected thence to the Thirty-third Congress. Declining a
re-election, he remained at Washington City, where he had a lucrative
practice before the Supreme Court. Mrs. Phillips, although the
mother of nine children, found time to obtain and transmit information
to General Beauregard, and after having been closely guarded for
awhile, she was permitted to go South on her parole and that of
her father, that she would not give "aid or comfort to the enemy."
Mrs. Baxley, Mrs. Hasler, Miss Lilly A. Mackel, Mrs. Levy, and
other lady prisoners had all been more or less prominent in Southern
society at Washington, and had made trips over the underground
railroad between Alexandria and Richmond. Also an English lady,
Mrs. Ellena Low, who had been arrested at Boston, with her son,
who had crossed the ocean bearing a commission in the Confederate
army. Miss E. M. Poole, alias Stewart, had been very successful
in carrying contraband information and funds between the two camps,
and when arrested the last time there were found concealed on her
person seven thousand five hundred dollars of unexpended funds.
Another devoted friend of the Confederates, who resided just outside
of the Union lines in Virginia, managed to fascinate General
Stoughton, a young West Point cavalry officer, and one evening
while he was enjoying her society, during a serenade by a regimental
band, he, with his band and orderlies, was surprised and captured,
and they were sent as prisoners-of-war to Richmond. "I do not mind
losing the brigadier," said Mr. Lincoln, in talking about the
capture, "for they are easily made, but there were some twenty
horses taken, and they cost one hundred and twenty-five dollars
apiece."
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SimonCameron
SIMON CAMERON was born at Waynesborough, Pennsylvania, March 3d,
1799; learned the art of printing; was Secretary of War under
President Lincoln, in 1861, resigning when appointed Minister
Plenipotentiary to Russia, in 1862; was United States Senator from
Pennsylvania, 1845-1849, 1857-1861, and 1867-1877, when he resigned,
and was succeeded by his son.